Publisher remanded pending blackmail trial
Far-rightist publisher Grigoris Michalopoulos was remanded in custody yesterday pending trial for allegedly blackmailing leading industrialists and churchmen, several of whom he is believed to have threatened with execution by the November 17 terrorist group. Michalopoulos, 65, owner of the Eleftheri Ora newspaper, was charged in February with criminal blackmail and attempted fraud. He was sent to prison yesterday after testifying before Athens examining magistrate Nikolaos Milios. The Michalopoulos case followed claims that industrialist Dimitrios Angelopoulos, killed by N17 in 1986, was blackmailed by the publisher in 1985. Other alleged blackmail victims include Angelopoulos’s nephew, Theodoros – whose wife, Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, heads Athens 2004 – late tycoon Yiannis Latsis and at least one bishop.
